Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 37, No.

1, 2003

Amartya Sens Capability Approach to Education: A Critical Exploration

MADOKA SAITO
This article examines the underexplored relationship between Amartya Sens capability approach to human well-being and education. Two roles which education might play in relation to the development of capacities are given particular attention: (i) the enhancement of capacities and opportunities and (ii) the development of judgement in relation to the appropriate exercise of capacities. This article offers a critical examination of the educational signicance of Amartya Sens capability approach to human well-being.1 Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, has made a number of noteworthy contributions to central elds of this discipline by combining tools from economics and philosophy. At the heart of his contributions is the notion of capabilities. According to Sen, the notion of capability relates centrally to freedomthe range of options a person has in ` ze and Sen, 1995, p. 10). deciding what kind of life to lead (Dre There seems to be a potentially strong and mutually enhancing relationship between Sens capability approach and education. However, despite the fact that Sens capability approach has received substantial attention from philosophers, ethicists, economists and other social scientists, it has not yet been critically examined from an educational perspective. Issues therefore remain to be explored concerning the relationship between the capability approach and education. In this article I aim to examine a number of central aspects of this relationship. Amartya Sen is not an educationalist but an economist and a philosopher and he has therefore not directly explored the notion of education in his theories. However, Sens capability approach is clearly apt for exploration from an educational point of view. Sen has insisted upon the need for a broad and rounded perspective on the issues with which he deals. He has emphasised, for example, the importance of considering the signicance of humanity in economics, a signicance that has often been underestimated in this eld.2 Such a breadth of consideration should surely include an educational perspective. This article has three parts. Part I describes Sens capability approach and seeks to illuminate why Sen considers the notion of capability to be the most comprehensive framework within which human well-being
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can be conceptualised. In order to understand the key concepts in the capability approach, the incompleteness of alternative approaches (the commodity approach, the welfare (utility) approach and the approach of Rawls) will be analysed. Parts II and III seek to explore the relationship between the capability approach and education. In Part II, two aspects of the contribution of the capability approach to education will be examined. One aspect relates to how the Human Development Indexthe HDI, a composite of educational attainment, life expectancy at birth, and real gross domestic product per capita (GDP/N) has emphasised the importance of education. The other aspect concerns how the concept of human capabilities brings into focus the fact that education involves both instrumental and intrinsic values. The rst half of Part III will discuss whether the capability approach is applicable to children. In the second half of Part III I will try to analyse what roles education should play in the capability approach. One role involves the expansion of capabilities and the other relates to teaching values in the exercise of capabilities. Despite the fact that the issues I explore are particularly important, Sen does not seem to have explored them in his work . However, I was able to interview Sen and was able to discover from him that he agrees in broad terms with my interpretation of the educational implications of his views. If the preliminary examination of the educational signicance of Sens capability approach to human well-being attempted in this article encourages educationalists to give more attention to the approach I shall be gratied. I strongly believe that encouraging educationalists to arrive at a clear understanding of the relationship between the capability approach and education will benet both education and the capability approach itself in signicant ways.
I SENS CAPABILITY APPROACH

The evolution of Sens capability approach to human well-being

The capability approach to human well-being is a concentration on freedom to achieve in general and the capabilities to function in particular, and the core concepts of this approach are functionings and capabilities (Sen, 1995, p. 266). A functioning is an achievement, whereas a capability is the ability to achieve (Sen, 1987, p. 36). Before discussing what the capability approach is in more detail, it would be useful to understand how Sen came to develop this approach. From the 1970s, Sen and his associates started to build a critique of mainstream welfare economics and utilitarianism, and extended and amended a framework traditionally used in microeconomics, describing how individuals obtain income and well-being. In Amartya Sens paper Equality of What? (1980), he introduced the concept of capability for the rst time. He criticised the argument that the evaluation of equality should merely be based on information about peoples sense of happiness or desire fullment, or on their command of primary goods (see Gore, 1997).
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In Sens earliest challenges to utilitarian economics, he adopted the basic needs perspective. This approach emphasises the notion that people have to meet fundamental needs to achieve well-being. For instance, they need food not to starve, and shelter and clothing to lead a recognisably human life. This approach emphasised the point that per capita income is not an adequate measure of a persons well-being, since raising incomes alone will not always increase well-being. Moreover, it claims that everyone should have access to the goods and services that satisfy their basic needs. This approach induced Sen to focus more on people and less on commodities.3 In other words, he paid attention to what people were able to do, rather than to what people could buy with their income. Therefore, Sen came to focus on what is of intrinsic value in life, rather than on the goods that provide instrumental value or utility (Pressman and Summereld, 2000, p. 9). Capabilities comprise what a person is able to do or be: the ability to be well nourished, to avoid escapable morbidity or mortality, to read, write and communicate, to take part in the life of the community, to appear in public without shame (Sen, 1990, p. 126).
Beyond traditional well-being approaches

In order to understand Sens capability approach, which provides in my view the most comprehensive framework for conceptualising well-being, it is essential to examine how he analyses the incompleteness of the traditional concepts of well-being: the commodity or income approach and the utility approach. In addition to considering these traditional well-being approaches, I will examine how Sen sees the incompleteness of Rawls theory of justice as an account of well-being. It has been common to consider economic growth and the expansion of goods and services as constituting the process of economic development, as does the commodity or income approach.4 In fact, Sen acknowledges the importance of the mutually enhancing relationship between income or commodity and capabilities. While he sees the importance of income or commodity as means to enhance capabilities, at the same time he pays great attention to the fact that enhancing capabilities in leading a life would tend, typically, to expand a persons ability to be more productive and earn higher income. We would expect a connection going from capability improvement to greater earning power and not only the other way around (Sen, 1999, p. 90). However, although income and commodity can be crucially important, Sen criticises the way of measuring a persons well-being in terms of the amount of income or commodities the person owns for the following reasons (See Clark, 1999, pp. 3337). First, Sen argues that, A persons well-being is not really a matter of how rich he or she is y Commodity command is a means to the end of well-being, but can scarcely be the end itself (Sen, 1985, p. 28). Commodities are merely objects which a person might use. Second, individuals have different commodity requirements (see, for example, Sen, 1992). Third, differing commodity requirements can also be found in
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different cultures and societies (see Clark, 1999). Lastly, as Nussbaum argues, more is not, in fact, always better, where wealth and income are concerned. Too many goods can encourage excessive competitiveness and make people insolent and arrogant, causing them to have a mercenary attitude towards other things (See Nussbaum, 1990, p. 211 and p. 245, n. 20). Next, the utility approach proposes considering well-being in terms of utility, both in utilitarianisms classical form as expressed particularly by Jeremy Bentham, and in more modern forms of utilitarianism. Sen has criticised both types of utilitarianism by arguing that neither pleasure or happiness in the classical form, nor the fullment of desire in the modern form, is appropriate as a representation of ones well-being. First, Sen argues that utilitarianism has no interest in the distribution of utilities, since the concentration is entirely on the total utility of everyone taken together (Sen, 1999, p. 57). Second, with regard to desires, whereas Sen thinks that some functionings are intrinsically valuable, on the desirebased utilitarianism account a functioning has value only to the extent that it is desired by the person concerned. This claim can be critically important because the process of constructing our desire is complex: A poor, undernourished person, brought up in penury, may have learned to come to terms with a half-empty stomach, seizing joy in small comforts and desiring no more than what seems realistic (Sen, 1987, p. 20). The deprivations are suppressed and mufed in the scale of utilities (reected by desire-fullment and happiness) by the necessity of endurance in uneventful survival (p. 15). What Sen emphasises here is that since we learn not to desire what we know to be unattainable, one may suffer extreme deprivation without having a strong desire for change (Sen, 1992, pp. 5455, and in Sugden, 1993, p. 1955). Therefore, it seems problematic to conceive of ones well-being in terms of the utility approach. Lastly, Sen indicates the incompleteness of Rawls theory of justice as fairness as an approach to well-being. In fact, Sen recognises and welcomes the fact that Rawls, by basing his theory of justice on resources rather than on utility, has shifted the focus of attention in the direction of freedom (in Sugden, 1993, p. 1956). Sen seems to see Rawls theory, based on the concept of primary goods, as the most credible alternative to his capability approach, since primary goods include rights, liberties, and opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect (Sen, 1999, p. 72). However, Sen argues that his capability approach to justice is to be preferred to Rawls in terms of discussing a persons wellbeing.5 Sen takes this view because he sees Rawls theory as incomplete in its claim that individuals have equal opportunities if they have equal command over resources, and in its concentration on means to freedom, rather than on the extent of the freedom that a person actually has (Sen, 1992, p. 81, and in Sugden, 1993, p. 1956). Sens argument is that because individuals differ in their ability to convert resources into functionings, providing an equal command over resources does not always mean giving equal opportunities.6 Since resources do not have intrinsic value, and we
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value resources for the opportunities that the resources create, Sen argues that it is more appropriate to value opportunities in the way that his capability approach does. It should be noted, however, that this whole argument does not imply a neglect of the concept of opportunities in the Rawlsian sense. In fact, both theories share a commitment to equality in opportunities. The difference between Rawls and Sen on this matter is that Rawls focuses on resources in order to achieve equal opportunities, an indirect strategy, whereas Sen tries to achieve opportunities directly (Sugden, 1993, p. 1956). Therefore, it seems inappropriate simply to argue that Rawls theory is in conict with the capability approach.
Functionings and capabilities

Sen acknowledges that his philosophical position in searching for a true answer to the question: What makes a good life? might be characterised as Aristotelian (Sen, 1992, p. 39). According to Sen, the capability of a person is a concept that has distinctly Aristotelian roots. Capability refers to the alternative combinations of functionings from which a person can choose. Thus, the notion of capability is essentially one of freedom the range of options a person has in deciding what kind of a life to lead ` ze and Sen, 1995, p. 10). (Dre The capability approach is a concentration on freedom to achieve in general and the capabilities to function in particular (Sen, 1995, p. 266).
A functioning is an achievement, whereas a capability is the ability to achieve. Functionings are, in a sense, more directly related to living conditions, since they are different aspects of living conditions. Capabilities, in contrast, are notions of freedom, in the positive sense: what real opportunities you have regarding the life you may lead (Sen, 1987, p. 36).

What Sen claims is that a persons well-being must be evaluated in the light of a form of assessment of the functionings achieved by that person (Sen, 1992, p. 39). This capability to achieve functionings reects the persons real opportunities or freedom of choice between possible lifestyles (Sen, 1993). The sense of freedom used here should be understood in the positive rather than the negative sensethat is, in terms of freedom to, rather than freedom from. Sen writes: Positive freedom is a good in its own right: being free to choose how to live ones own life is one of the good things of life. Thus freedom is one of the dimensions of well-being (in Sugden, 1993, p. 1952).
II SENS CAPABILITY APPROACH AND EDUCATION: EXISTING CONTRIBUTIONS

Despite the fact that Sen has not explored educational thought in itself deeply, his capability approach seems to be signicantly related to
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education in many ways. In order to understand this relationship, in this Part, I am going to examine the contributions to education the capability approach has made from two aspects. The rst aspect is through the Human Development Index (HDI), which seems to have caught the publics eye in terms of the importance of education internationally. Since this index is a composite of adult literacy and school enrolment, life expectancy at birth, and real gross domestic product per capita (GDP/N), people are encouraged to pay attention to the widespread and equitable provision of education for well-being.
Emphasising the importance of education through the HDI

Many people have argued that it is difcult to make the capability approach operational. For instance, Roemer criticises Sen for not providing an index of functionings.7 However, there are some ways in which the capability approach can be made operational.8 The HDI is considered to be one of the ways in which Sens capability approach can be operational, despite the fact that there are many criticisms of the index, which are discussed below. The construction and renement of the HDI has attempted to analyse the comparative status of socio-economic development based upon key capabilities in different countries.9 The HDI measures relative, not absolute, levels of human development and its focus is on ends of development, rather than the means (as with per capita GDP alone) (Todaro, 1999, p. 73). Ends of development specify three goals;
longevity as measured by life expectancy at birth, knowledge as measured by a weighted average of adult literacy (two-thirds) and mean years of schooling (one-third), and standard of living as measured by real per capita income adjusted for the differing purchasing power parity (ppp) of each countrys currency to reect cost of living and for the assumption of rapidly diminishing marginal utility of income above average world income levels (ibid.).

The HDI, published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has been greatly inuenced by Sens thinking, since he was a consultant to the UN in creating the HDI.10 The HDI rst appeared in 1990 in UNDPs annual Human Development Report (Pressman and Summereld, 2000, p. 101). According to the UNDP, it emphasises the development of human choices and returns to the centrality of people and it is reected in measuring development not as the expansion of commodities and wealth but as the widening of human choices (UNDP, 1990, p. 1). However, it should be noted here that there have been criticisms that the HDI does not articulate Sens capability approach appropriately, since the HDI uses just a few functionings, namely educational attainment, life expectancy, and per capita GDP. Moreover, there is a doubt over whether such components of the HDI are appropriate in measuring human development or not. This is what UNDP itself admits: human
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development goes beyond the choices that the HDI captures. Therefore, it is arguable whether the HDI sufciently reects the concept of Sens capability approach. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether literacy and school enrolment capture the state of education in a country adequately; in other words, the choice of indicators in the HDI may need to be reexamined.11 Therefore, in view of all of these criticisms, it is important to handle the HDI with care and further research is needed to make the HDI more effective.12 Having taken all the above into account, we should now examine how the conception of the HDI in relation to human development contributes to education. When countries focus only on income and income growth, promoting only economic growth will be the top priority and issues other than income growth tend to be neglected. Therefore, as Pressman and Summereld argue, distributional issues become irrelevant; education is likely to get short changed; the environment is likely to be ignored; and long-run growth may be sacriced (Pressman and Summereld, 2000, p. 102). Sen argues that we arrive at very different conclusions if we think of development in terms of real income rather than selected functionings.13 However, introducing the concept of the HDI draws attention to issues that promote human well-being: The HDI leads governments to direct their policy efforts toward different ends-providing health and education for all citizens, and supporting a sustainable environment and a sustainable living standard (ibid.). This is particularly important in countries where education has received little attention. Sen indicates that in India the promotion of education has received little attention from social and political leaders in the post-independence period.14 This is due to a common attitude of political parties, trade unions, revolutionary organisations and other social movements.15 Therefore, in eradicating educational deprivation in such a country, a strong commitment to the widespread and equitable provision of basic education is the rst ` ze and Sen, 1995, pp. 110 requirement to achieve rapid progress (Dre 111). The HDI can play an important role in calling the governments attention to the widespread and equitable provision of education in making policies. Moreover, longevity as measured by life expectancy at birth, one of the indicators of the HDI, is also highly inuenced by education. I would like to emphasise the impact of the education that mothers receive on child survival. This impact is an inuential factor for life expectancy, especially in developing countries. Maternal education inuences child survival through various pathways: enhanced socio-economic status, greater health choice for children, including interaction with medical personnel, cleanliness, emphasis on child quality in terms of fewer children, and greater food and capital investments.16 In addition to this, female autonomy plays an important role in child health. Female autonomy includes a dedication to education, an open political system, and a largely civilian society without a rigid class structure, a history of egalitarianism and radicalism, and of national consensus arising from political contest with marked elements of populism
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(see Caldwell, 1986). This autonomy can be achieved through education, and undoubtedly this autonomy also helps females to enhance their own capabilities (see Nussbaum, 1998, 2000). Consequently, female education and autonomy are the factors that contribute to child survival. This is closely linked to one of the indicators in the HDI, life expectancy. This whole argument, therefore, clearly articulates the fact that the HDI has contributed by directing peoples attention to the importance of education, even though the concept of the HDI is only a start in illuminating and recognising the importance of promoting human wellbeing and needs to be improved. In particular, since the educational attainments comprised in the HDI are only adult literacy and school enrolment, further research is needed in order to determine the appropriate functionings that best articulate the educational attainment for ones wellbeing. These will go beyond adult literacy and school enrolment.

Illuminating education as involving both intrinsic and instrumental value

The second contribution that Sens capability approach has made is to illuminate the concept that education involves both intrinsic and instrumental values. Sen discusses the relationship between human capital and human capability as an expression of freedom. Both seem to place humanity at the centre of attention, and to be closely related to each other. However, the former tends to concentrate on the agency of human beings in augmenting production possibilities (Sen, 1993, p. 293). On the other hand, the latter focuses on the abilitythe substantive freedomof people to lead the lives they have reason to value and to enhance the real choices they have (ibid.).17 In order to clarify the relationship between human capital and human capability, Sen articulates the role of human capabilities in three ways: (1) their direct relevance to the well-being and freedom of people; (2) their indirect role through inuencing social change; and (3) their indirect role through inuencing economic production (Sen, 1999, pp. 296297). While human capital is considered to t into the third category, the concept of human capability incorporates all categories.18 All categories relating to the role of human capabilities are composed of intrinsic value and instrumental value. How does education come into this argument? The human capital received from education can be conceived in terms of commodity production. However, Sen argues that education plays a role not only in accumulating human capital but also in broadening human capability.19 This can be through a person beneting from education in reading, communicating, arguing, in being able to choose in a more informed way, in being taken more seriously by others and so on (Sen, 1995, p. 294).
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In short, on the one hand, education is an important factor in broadening human capabilities, which include human capacities. On the other hand, human capabilities play a role in inuencing both intrinsic and instrumental values. Therefore, it seems appropriate to say that education plays a role in inuencing both intrinsic and instrumental values. What the concept of human capabilities has contributed to this discussion is to clarify the process of inuencing intrinsic and instrumental values through education. Clarifying this process helps to show education as concerned with both intrinsic and instrumental value.
III AN EXPLORATION OF SENS CAPABILITY APPROACH TO EDUCATION: QUESTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES

Is the capability approach applicable to children?

This question comes from the notion that lies at the core of the concept of the capability approach: the notion of capability as freedom the range of options a person has in deciding what kind of life to lead, the quotation with which this paper began. Can we discuss the well-being of children as well as of adults in terms of capabilities?20 Few would deny that children need support from parents, teachers or societies in choosing what is best for their lives.21 When it comes to education also, the same argument can be made. Despite the fact that neither parents nor the State have a right to complete authority over the education of children, as Gutmann argues, it seems appropriate to say that a child remains in the care of others in the choice of what to learn, so that the childs interests can be facilitated.22 Therefore, although I agree that functionings, the set of things that a person can do in life in Sens sense, are of course important for children, when it comes to capabilities in children, the matter appears complicated and problematic. To the question I posed, How can we apply the capability approach to children, since children are not mature enough to make decisions by themselves?, Sen answered by showing this applicability in two respects.23 First, he emphasises the importance not of the freedom a child has now, but of the freedom the child will have in the future:
If the child does not want to be inoculated, and you nevertheless think it is a good idea for him/her to be inoculated, then the argument may be connected with the freedom that this person will have in the future by having the measles shot now. The child when it grows up must have more freedom. So when you are considering a child, you have to consider not only the childs freedom now, but also the childs freedom in the future.24

This is well articulated in what John White argues in relation to education. `-vis the child He claims that adopting an extreme libertarian position vis-a is irrational. In other words, making no effort to teach a child anything, since we do not know what is good or bad for the child, does not lead the child to improve his/her well-being: Letting children learn what they wanted in this way might well restrict the range of possible things which
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they might choose for their own sake: they might fail to learn about other things which might also have been included (White, 1973, p. 22). Giving temporary freedom to a child does not always mean that the child will have freedom in future, and similarly, restricting the temporary freedom of a child may well expand the freedom that the child will have in future. We, therefore, have to consider the freedom for a child in a lifelong perspective. For educational guidelines, White proposes that the least harmful course we can follow is to let a child determine what the Good shall be for him or her as far as possible. He claims that as long as we ensure (a) that he knows about as many activities or ways of life as possible which he may want to choose for their own sake, and (b) that he is able to reect on priorities among them from the point of view not only of the present moment but as far as possible of his life as a whole, it is right to restrict a childs liberty now so as to give him as much autonomy as possible in future (ibid.). Second, although some may argue that freedom is less important for a child than an adult since the contemporary well-being of the child is better judged by parents or other adult persons, Sen points out that the capability approach is still applicable to children. As we have already discussed in Part I, the capability approach makes two assertions: (1) that the right perspective from which to judge a persons well-being is functionings, and not necessarily mental attitudes such as utilities; (2) that, in judging from the perspective of functionings, we should not merely look at whether a person is enjoying the preferred alternative but whether a person actually has the choice of an alternative: freedom to choose. According to Sen:
It is the second aspect (2) that is weak for the child but the rst (1) is not. The functioning space (1) is still appropriate to think about, even the wellbeing of the child. The freedom aspect (2) is affected, but even the freedom aspect may be important for a child because: A) a child makes some decisions, like whether he or she is being unhappy, wants milk and so on; and B) a childs future involves the time when the child will actually exercise some freedom.25

In this sense, when dealing with children, it is the freedom they will have in the future rather than the present that should be considered. Therefore, as long as we consider a persons capabilities in terms of their life-span, the capability approach seems to be applicable to children.26 The fact that children need to have support from parents, society or others in terms of choosing which capabilities to exercise will lead us to consider what role education can play in the capability approach. Two issues will be examined in order to understand what the role of education should be in the capability approach and what kind of education best implements this approach.
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The expansion of capabilities

First, education can play a role in the expansion of capabilities. Under the term expansion, we can discuss two aspects of capabilities, although they are mutually related. One is the expansion of a childs capacity or ability. A simple example is that Kate learns how to swim. Therefore, education enables her to acquire a capability to swim. The other is the expansion in opportunities that the child has. A very simple example is that Lisa learns mathematics and as a result, she has wider opportunities to become a mathematician, a physicist, a banker and so on. These newly created opportunities and capabilities, such as becoming a mathematician or a physicist through learning mathematics, may be ones that Lisa was not aware of, and which were not in her capability set before learning mathematics. Perhaps she did not aim to acquire those new capability sets when she started to learn mathematics. There are so many opportunities that we are not even aware of in our daily lives. Education can come to play a role here. Lisa, in this example, learns mathematics and therefore becomes more autonomous in being able to choose her way of life and to become a physicist, a mathematician and the like. Education makes a child autonomous in terms of creating a new capability set for the child. White argues that the child must become autonomous, to be sure, on the completion of his education, despite the fact that he does not advocate any necessary commitment to an autonomous way of life (White, 1973, p. 23). He says that it is entirely up to a student whether he/she chooses to stay autonomous or not, once he/she becomes autonomous. In order for the child to be able to make choices in his/her life, the child needs to become autonomous through education. Despite the fact that Sen does not seem to have discussed autonomy directly, the concept of autonomy can be crucially important in the capability approach. Dealing with compulsory education is a good case to examine. In Sens capability approach, giving children opportunities to learn under a system such as compulsory education seems to be an ideal concept. Sen argues:
I think the main argument for compulsory education is that it will give the child when grown up much more freedom and, therefore, the educational argument is a very future oriented argument.27

However, I would like to claim that providing compulsory education is not enough to enhance childrens capabilities, although I would not deny the importance and necessity of compulsory education. In a country, for instance, where a very successful compulsory education system is in existence, this compulsory education does not necessarily enhance childrens capabilities. If the education system takes an extremely topdown approach and stresses competitiveness, children tend to study subjects that are required for examination success. Under this kind of education system, children nd difculties in learning to become autonomous. In this case, the children have no choice but to follow what others tell them to do and are considered to have limited capabilities even
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though compulsory education is provided. As a consequence, it seems appropriate to argue that education which plays a role in expanding the childs capabilities should be a kind of education that makes people autonomous.28
Teaching values in exercising capabilities

Second, education can play a role in teaching values in exercising capabilities. Since we have discussed the importance of expanding capabilities through education, it is important to address the question of which values should govern the exercise of capabilities. For example, it is important to address the question: is it appropriate to enhance any capability? Sen would answer, yes, to this question, since capabilities per se are, in his view, always good. However, it is not clear that this is the case. One example is when David has a capability related to physical power. If David beats up his wife, this is neither socially nor morally acceptable. However, Sens argument would be that this capability per se is not bad. The outcome may be bad, but the man could also use this capability to carry heavy things for his wife. Another example is when James has a capability to kill Philip. If this act is done, James may well be a murderer, and this capability is not acceptable. However, again it is not appropriate to say simply that this capability is bad. The outcome may be bad, but James capability to kill Philip can be used as James self-defence in an emergency. Therefore, according to Sens argument, capabilities per se are non-separable, and bad capabilities per se do not exist. Capabilities can be judged to be bad only in their use. Nussbaum criticises this aspect of Sens argument in relation to freedom. She is not satised with Sens idea that freedom per se is always good, although it can be badly used. One example she uses is the freedom of the motorcycle rider to ride without a helmet. In her argument we should say that that freedom is neutral and trivial in itself, probably bad in use rather than always good (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 24). This seems more appropriate. If Sen insists that bad capabilities per se do not exist, and only the ways they may be used are bad, Nussbaums argument in relation to the concept of freedom also seems to be applicable to the notion of capabilities. In other words, we should say that capabilities are neutral in themselves, possibly bad in use rather than always good. How can education play a role in exercising capabilities that are neutral? Schefer sees capability as a notion linked to freedom, as Sen does, and denes it as embracing what comes within the range of a persons effective choice, effort or decisionwhat it is in a persons power to do and what, in that sense, he is effectively free to do(Schefer, 1985, p. 59). The way he uses the term capability is very similar to the way in which Sen uses it. For instance, Schefer argues, if a person has a capability, it is within the effective range of his decision whether or not he acquires the feature in question(p. 61). To enhance ones capability to perform is to empower oneself to perform, Schefer continues. To
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empower Tim to swim, for instance, is to bring it about that if he chooses and decides to swim, he will. However, Schefer cautions us here that empowering Tim to swim does not mean that he will choose to swim. Empowering him to swim and getting him to value swimming are different matters. Empowering stops short of the promotion of positive valuation of the performance in question; it creates the capability, skill or power, leaving the matter of valuation, exercise or decision open (ibid.). Here, education can come to play a role in teaching different values to a child. The outcome yielded through ones acts as a consequence of being empowered may not always be considered good. In other words, creating capabilities through empowerment does not involve valuing whether the outcome of the use of a given capability is good or bad. As Schefer puts this, capabilities are so interwoven that such divisions are not, in general, possible. To keep the learning of poisoning out of his range of decision would also keep the learning of healing out of his range of decision (ibid.). Therefore, education should come to play a role here in supplementing the enhancement of capability with attention to values. For instance, we may want Mary to become a mathematician or an artist, but not a drug addict or a murderer. We need to develop the judgement of the person to be able to value in which way it is appropriate to use capabilities through education. Although Sen has not explored this issue with the concept of values, it is critical to discuss it in order to avoid the abuse of capabilities. Hence, the kind of education that best articulates the concept of Sens capability approach seems to be the one that makes people autonomous and, at the same time, develops peoples judgement about capabilities and their exercise.
IV CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this article, I have tried to examine the strong but neglected relationship between Sens capability approach and education. Many issues remain for further exploration. Is it possible to outline a range of capabilities that children should engage with? Should we generate a core curriculum in education in order to enhance the capabilities in children? Such questions are inevitable if we try to make Sens capability approach practical from the educational point of view. Sens capability approach is rich in implication for education. However, unless this approach receives serious attention from educationists these implications will be unrealised. Research on the relationship between the capability approach and education is necessary for the enhancement of both the approach and of education, since there is a crucial interrelationship and interaction between the two.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I want to thank Terence McLaughlin and Ingrid Robeyns who not only have given me helpful suggestions but also have continuously encouraged
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and supported me. Moreover, I would like to thank Amartya Sen for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. I am also grateful to the Institute of Developing Economies Advanced School and the Cambridge Overseas Trust for nancial support. Correspondence: Madoka Saito, 2-6-12-803 Shirosaki-machi, Oita-city, Oita 870-0045, Japan. Email: madoka2001@cantab.net
NOTES
1. Sens contributions range from axiomatic theory of social choice, over denitions of welfare and poverty indexes, to empirical studies of famine. Sen has claried the conditions which permit aggregation of individual values into collective decisions, and the conditions which permit rules for collective decision making that are consistent with a sphere of rights for the individual (Press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1999, p. 157). 2. This is well articulated in Atkinsons remark: his own central position in the discipline has meant that when he has ignored the conventional lines of demarcation then graduate students have had the courage to follow (Atkinson, 1999, p. 189). 3. Despite the fact that the basic needs approach played an important role for Sen in creating the capability approach, Sen comments on what Balestrino (1994) points out about the distinction between basic needs and capabilities: 1) it does not attach any explicit importance to the question of positive freedom; and 2) it tends to identify commodity requirements independently of personal features and external circumstances. The latter, he argues, is quite a serious limitation of the standard ways of seeing basic needs, which is in terms of commodities (and other means), which are specied independently of persons (Sen, 1994, p. 341). 4. Since Adam Smith (1776) wrote about the progress of opulence, economists have been preoccupied with characterising and measuring living conditions in terms of income and commodity command. 5. In fact, it is not clear whether Sens focus on capabilities and Rawls focus on resources should be discussed in the same terms or not. Sugden sharply brings out this point about whether a theory of justice should be based on assessments of real opportunities, rather than focusing on the distribution of resources. He says that the idea of co-operation is central to Rawls theory. Therefore, Rawls does not commend this view of justice as one which is true, good, or right. He commends it as a workable political or public conception of justice for a democratic society (Sugden, 1993, p. 1957). 6. However, Rawls distinguishes between natural and social primary goods and argues, the absence of congenital handicap is a natural primary good (Sugden, 1993, p. 1957). Therefore, Sugden suggests that we have to understand Rawls argument for equality in the distribution of social primary goods such as income and wealth, not in the sense of primary goods. 7. See Roemer, 1996, p. 192, and in Robeyns, 2000, p. 21. Roemer also argues that even given functionings indices, Sen provides no equivalence relation on the class of capability sets which would enable us to say when one persons capability is better or richer than anothers. Similarly Sugden suggests that Sen has disappointingly little to say on the crucial issue of how sets of vectors of functioningsas opposed to the vectors of functionings themselvesshould be valued (Sugden, 1993, p. 1953). 8. Atkinson says, It is important to bear in mind that there is more than one way in which an idea of this kind can be operationally effective. In particular, the application of an idea may be powerful in theoretical terms, without necessarily leading to a quantitative measure. The concept is effective if it causes people to think in a different way, and this applies to analytical models as well as to quantication (Atkinson, 1999, pp. 185186). 9. As Pressman and Summereld point out, the HDI is one of the most inuential scholarly attempts to measure socio-economic development based upon key capabilities in different countries (2000, p. 101). 10. It should also be noted that related indices have been developed for gender disparities (the GDI or gender development index, 1995) and empowerment (the GEM or gender empowerment

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

measure, 1995) (Pressman and Summereld, 2000, p. 101). In the Human Development Report, human development is dened as a process of enlarging peoples choices (UNDP, 1990, p. 1). I am very aware of the problem of whether literacy and school enrolment are the appropriate indicators for measuring human development, and the indicator itself can be a crucial problem. However, I am not going to examine the justication of the contents in the HDI since the aim of this paper is to see the impact the HDI has contributed to education in general. There are also other criticisms of the HDI. For instance, the data that the HDI uses is insufcient and inaccurate as different countries dene literacy differently. Another criticism is that the HDI fails to discriminate among the rich countries; nineteen countries ranging from the USA to Japan crowd the HDI between 0.960 and 0.996. This is because they are nearly at the maximum in life expectancy and literacy y It is necessary in future development of the index to examine ways of differentiating at the top y by adding new variables, nding better measures of existing variables (Desai, 1991, pp. 355356). For other criticisms and limitations of the HDI, see Kelley, 1991, and Srinivasan, 1994. For instance, Pressman and Summereld point out that Luxembourg ranks near the top of all countries in national well-being if we look only at per capita income. However, it ranks 17th among more developed nations in the most recent HDI rankings. In contrast, Canada, Sri Lanka and Vietnam move up signicantly when assessed by the HDI rather than just by income. In India, adult literacy is only about 50% and India has been left way behind in basic education by other countries. Other countries here indicate Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Zimbabwe and Zambia, which have done worse than India in many other ` ze and Sen, 1995, pp. 23). developmental achievements (Dre Sen points out ideological convictions that contributed to this neglect as follows: (1) the conservative upper-caste notion that knowledge is not important or appropriate for the lower castes; (2) a distorted understanding of Gandhis view that literacy in itself is no education; and (3) the belief, held in some radical quarters, that the present educational system is a tool of ` ze and Sen, 1995, subjugation of the lower classes or a vestige of the colonial period (Dre pp. 110111). There are attempts to identify the factors through which maternal education inuences infant and child mortality (see P. N. Rajna, Ajay Kumar Mishra and S. Krishnamoorthy, 1998). In fact, he distinguishes human capital from physical capital. The former can have importance by itself (aside from being instrumentally important in production) in a way that does not apply to physical capital such as machinery. Sen says if machinery did nothing to raise production, it would be quite eccentric to value its existence nevertheless, whereas being educated or being in good health could be valued, even if it were to do nothing to increase the production of ` ze and Sen, 1995, p. 43). commodities (Dre It should be rmly stressed that Sen acknowledges the importance of human capital. However, he is emphasising the point that the concept of human capital needs supplementation, as we see, in human capability. Sen writes: It is important to bear in mind: 1) that health, education, and other features of a good quality of life are of importance on their own (and not just as human capital, geared to commodity production), 2) they can also be, in many circumstances, extremely good for promoting commodity production, and 3) they can also have other important personal and social ` ze and Sen, 1995, p. 43). roles (Dre I agree that functionings, the set of things that a person does in life in Sens sense, are of course important for children. However, my claim is that when it comes to capabilities in children, the matter appears complicated and problematic. For example, Hobbes argues that in a childs helpless condition, parental authority can be put in force to care for a child. McLaughlin argues the necessity of the right of the parents to coordinate and review the educational experience and development of the child in helping to full their abilities when children are not mature enough to do this themselves (McLaughlin 2000, p. 91). McLaughlin argues with what Gutmann says with the caution that this denial by liberal educators of unlimited parental rights does not involve a denial of all parental rights, or their unqualied transferral to (say) the state. It involves merely a denial that parents have a right to determine exclusively the educational experience of their children (McLaughlin, 1992, p. 121). I interviewed Sen on 2 March 2001.

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24. Sens response in the interview with me on 2 March, 2001. 25. Sens response in the interview with me on 2 March, 2001. 26. However, even though children do not have enough experience to know what can be of worth to them in the future, it is important to give them practice in making choices, probably over minor matters, at an early stage. 27. Sens response in the interview with me on 2 March, 2001. 28. As a consequence of the expansion of ones capabilities through education, society as a whole is enabled to ourish. As Sen says, Basic education, good health, and other human attainments are not only directly valuable as constituent elements of our basic capabilities, these capabilities can also help in generating economic success of a more standard kind, which in turn can contribute to ` ze and Sen, 1998, p. 6). There is circularity: enhancing the quality of human life even more (Dre education enables people to yield capabilities, and these capabilities can be the means to develop economic growth, and again economic growth enables people to attain further capabilities.

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